Diary of a Dead Man
by ineedyoursway
Summary: ONE SHOT. AU. Exploratory surgery into the soul of a darker Edward Cullen. ExB. darkward contest submission


**Darkward Vampfic Contest**

**Title: Diary of a Dead Man**

**Penname: ineedyoursway**

**Beta: revrag**

**Disclaimer: not me & all that jazz**

http:/www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/community/Darkward_Vampfic_Contest/72958/

#

My son handed me a book the day of my eighty-third birthday. He flew out from his home in San Francisco, California, all the way to Chicago. I still lived in his childhood home, and my childhood city. My life was long and well-lived. I had a family, a lover, a husband. Overall, it was uneventful. But there was this one mystery. This one facet of my life that is still unsolved. I thought this book was his attempt to clarify his thinking, to explain to me why he did the things he did. To explain the things he never said.

The book was a diary.

Edward Cullen's diary.

#

The Fifth of February, Nineteen Twenty-one

The girl I saw today had the sweetest blood imaginable. It is not something to be taken lightly, blood as sweet as hers. It was the nectar from the most delectable flower, which produces the most delicious honey. It was the raw material, the ingredient, the base flavor, the calling, the desire, the craving. My disaster.

A man named Robert Fellow crossed my path. His hair was balding, sort of schizophrenic, and escaping from under the tufts of his top hat. I hate Chicago. It smells of the working class, and it bothers me that there are so many immigrants. I feel filthy when I walk the streets. Robert Fellow… he had just finished working. He smelled like work, that work smell, that disgusting, dirty, work smell. But I was thirsty, so I pulled him behind a building. There was a woman beating at a rug, attempting to clean it with dirt. I sneered at her before downing my prey.

Robert Fellow fell, fell, fell, dead before me.

Sometimes when I travel to New York City, I lose myself in the tenements there. It is disgusting, New York City. It is worse than Chicago. I don't like to travel to New York City.

The rapidity of my thoughts is disconcerting, and I feel dirty, dirty, disgusting, with all of the excess running through my mind. I cannot even write without breaking my utensil. They snap and the ink leaks out like blood from a fresh wound. Everything reminds me of blood from a fresh wound, spreading and tainting and delicious.

There is something innocent about watching young children play. Sometimes I want to drain them.

The girl, that damn girl, she tripped on a wayward rock and went sprawling onto the ground. She cut her knee open, that damn girl, damn that girl for cutting her knee open. She should be more careful, instead of sending her blood towards the crazy man (not a man, I am not a man) lurking in the fucking trees. Writing these phrases down on paper makes me giddy. The script 'f' of fuck is an elegant, ironic lead.

Damn that girl. I watched the blood drip down her leg. She poked it with her damn finger. Could not have been more than eight, that girl. Damn her. She stood up afterwards, though. Went off after her comrades, those other children who left her in the dirt. The dirt now tainted with the blood. And the damn girl, damn girl, that damn girl that I want to drain. I let her go for no reason. Fuck me, and that fucking elegant 'f', too.

Beatrice Beagle. I cannot believe that was actually her name. She walked towards me, her cheeks pinched in the illusion of naturally rosy skin. Her hair was black as midnight, blacker than black, Beatrice Beagle. Her eyes darted like poisoned arrows, casting death stares to all men in her path. They dropped like flies underneath that intimidating stare. That damn socialite Beatrice Beagle. Her bust overflowed from her dress, pushed up and up and constricted her breathing. I killed her that night. I left her in a tenement to rot. Damn those immigrants.

#

December Twelfth, Nineteen Thirty-four

Carlisle Cullen always says my name with this disgusting spat behind it. He frowns upon me, that righteous fellow. Every time I say fellow I am instantly drawn back to Robert Fellow. Nothing is happening these days. I feel ancient. I always feel ancient. I always say always because everything is always and always the same.

Everyone's wives and children and lovers and friends remind me of that damn girl who cut her leg in Chicago. I could have drained that girl, could have killed her and taken her god-damn soul. Or just put her in the ground to rot with the dirty earth.

'Edward, son.' Carlisle says that to me always. I cannot believe it. I am not his son. I am no one's son but my father's, my dead father rotting away in the earth. I visited his grave today. I laughed at his grave. It is a bit blasphemous to laugh at a grave, but my life is blasphemy in its entirety so I just accept it. His grave says 'loving husband, father, friend'. Sometimes, I scare the man on the graveyard shift.

I killed Henry Seymour.

He had the graveyard shift.

He walked around with his cane, tapping the graves. I watched him piss on one once, so I had to kill the man. You can't just fucking piss on a grave. You can laugh at them but you can't piss on them. I left his murder all out in the open so no one would want to replace him. It created quite a stir. Two holes in his neck where I stabbed him with a nail, and then sucked the blood from the wounds. Rumors of vampire went all a flurry. I laughed at that, too.

They replaced him in two days. Man named Richard Dockins.

To make a statement, I killed him, too.

They replaced him.

I got bored.

I saw her again. That damn girl. But this time she had no open wounds and her breasts bounced underneath her blouse. I knew it was her exactly, and I followed her to her apartment. She still lives in Chicago. Faulkner wrote that humans were meant to be static because they walk upright. It's a load of bullshit. Only seeing one place in a life with an expiration date is stupid. She is stupid, the girl with the sweet blood. I know because she lost the key to her apartment, and she hid an extra under the doormat.

She was still young though. I wanted to fuck her so I watched her undress while perched on the roof above her window. My dick was rock solid and my breathing matched hers. She walked over to the window. Her heartbeat accelerated. I wanted to take her, but there was a goddamn shout from the street before I had my chance.

'Edward, son!' It was Carlisle Cullen. I am not even his son.

#

The tenth of June, nineteen-forty

I signed up for the draft just for something to do. It also angered me that Chamberlain resigned. I got the letter that said I'd been 'called to the front lines, ye valiant soldier' but not in as elegant of words. Carlisle told me not to go and I laughed at his audacity. He thinks he's my father. I don't know why.

I killed a woman in nurse's garb on the way there. Her nametag said Betty. Nurse Betty. Nurse Betty with curly, red hair and red lips and red blood. I only did it because after I drink my color changes slightly, and I look at least a bit human. Not really, though. Not enough because I was rejected when the doctor took my temperature. They wondered how I could be living with a temperature so low.

I told them I was dead.

And then I walked out.

I saw the girl again. The girl with the goddamn bloody knee. The stupid, naïve one. She was nursing. Of course she was nursing. She had on all the white, and her hair was in the cap and everything. I don't know why all these girls want to fix the broken men that come home from war. It is gruesome. She was sitting over this man, this man bleeding from a wound in his head, this man, this man who was so attached to her that even his muddled thoughts proclaimed that she was his last connection with the living. He died shortly thereafter. The goddamn stupid girl didn't notice for thirty minutes.

I walked before her, and the stench of the blood and her blood and dead blood was so overpowering, I had to stop breathing. I know people are scared when the whites of their eyes show. The whites of her eyes showed. I chuckled. When she spoke it was of no purpose, except it sounded of sweet honey, the sweet honey of her blood, drifting towards my ear drums with deft clarity.

We walked out into the street together. She remarked on how cold my hand was. I told her not to goddamn trip on the street, but in a tone much more polite and sophisticated. She didn't notice the content. We didn't listen to each other, except to the tenor of our voices intertwining. The murmur of her heart would crescendo in seemingly random moments, but I would collect myself.

Her pubic hair was darker and curlier than the hair on her head, and coarse when I felt it with my nose. The throbbing of her femoral artery, pressing upon the delicate skin of her inner thigh, pulsed against my cheek. She called out when she came, a string of unintelligible words that really didn't differ much from our earlier conversation.

She asked me my name while stepping into her nurse's garb. I sat against the edge of the bed, my feet resting on the hardwood floor. She asked me again because I didn't respond. I stared at her. She shut up.

I smiled politely when ushering her out the door.

#

June 22 1940

What if I love her?

This stupid girl.

She makes me stupid.

She asked me if I could love her. Just like that. She said, 'do you love me?' and I told her no. Of course I told her no. What else was I supposed to say? She just nodded, though. Not at all disappointed. It was like she expected me to fail her, that stupid girl. She's right. I failed her. I fucked her anyways.

Her skin is limitless underneath my fingertips. There is nothing silkier or more plush, velveteen and heavenly to the touch. When I entered her she broke like a susceptible dam, her blood leaking out and around me, in a way I had never drawn any before. It was strange, to smell the blood in such an unfamiliar way. She cried a bit. Also strange. The tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, staining the dusty, low thread-count sheets. She held onto my hair, touches that were amplified but also impossible to feel.

She touched my skin and remarked on how young I looked in comparison to her.

I ignored her because it was a stupid thing to say.

She rolled her eyes and slid a coarse dress over her head while I sat naked on her bed, my legs crossed, and my skin so pale it practically glowed like a freakish firefly. She reapplied her lipstick, globbed it on thick and heavy, before returning to me and sitting by my side. She openly stared at my dick. I let her.

She told me her name, Isabella, though I could care less.

I did not tell her mine.

I don't think I like that name.

Isabella. Isa. Bella.

#

July 1940

I did the most ridiculous thing I have ever done today.

I went on a date.

Isabella, she got all dolled up in a nice dress. I wore a suit I borrowed from Carlisle. I took her out. She ate. I watched. She asked if I was going to eat. I told her no, and then I told her she was just lucky I wasn't thirsty. She didn't crack a smile. The table had a blood red tablecloth draped elegantly across it. The tips brushed the floor around our feet. She didn't put her napkin on her lap. I reached over and did it for her. She blushed, all of the blood rising and pooling beneath her skin.

She told me I look nice in a suit. I smiled but bit the insides of my cheeks.

We walked the streets of Chicago together. I figured I could probably pass for her brother or son, but not her lover. Lover. Love her. No. I don't. She draped her hand in the crook of my elbow and we were conventional in a strange way. I even had a flash of bringing her home or making her my home. But then I smelled the unique blood of a passing stranger, and, just like that, I was distracted.

#

December 31st, 1949. 11:59 PM.

Ten seconds

Nine seconds

Eight, seven, six

Five, four, three, two

One

Zero.

Half a century of time and I am unchanging.

#

September 7th '60 or '61. Hell if I care.

I feel like dying. Too bad.

I knew she would be at the same place. Just outside Chicago, she has a house, 2 kids, a dog, and a husband that is as dumb as she is. His name is Mike Newton. I wanted to fucking kill him. He walked into their house, the luxurious swagger of whiskey on his breath. His right leg was engulfed by a mirror image of that young, skin-kneed girl who almost died that day. I should've killed her. I'd rather have killed her then than see her partake in this fate.

She watched him from a single spot, standing stoic, staring. From the window above the sink, she watched. She watched the sun set and the sky sparkle, all the while staying sullen. Her son and daughter played out in the front yard, riding bicycles in circles on the driveway. Every Wednesday she dragged the aluminum trashcan to the curve, grunting due to the weight, scuffing the ground.

And I watched her. I watched her hair grey in places and I watched wrinkles appear in the corners of her eyes. She aged gracefully, somewhat, though the weight from her pregnancies never dropped. Their days together were increasingly dull with age, but I kept watching just for something to do or something to say.

When Mike Newton came home today he brought with him a briefcase filled with useless papers, and an uninhibited, hazy mind. His flask was empty, drained as he stumbled up the steps, his foot catching on a stray piece of pavement and sending him sprawling across the lawn. He lay for a moment, his pudgy face buried in the dewy grass, his back rising and falling with steady breaths. And then he grumbled, pushing his fat up and rolling on his back like a splayed beetle. Isabella watched from her spot above the sink.

He righted himself, at which point Isabella left her post in order to greet him at the front door. He swayed a bit while meeting his housewife, and then followed her inside. I saw something flash in his eyes. I knew it. I saw it. They walked down the hall to the living room and sat down, the cushions moaning and groaning under their weight. Mike reclined in his chair, his feet splayed in the air. Isabella put the children to sleep. There was nothing abnormal until he caught her in the kitchen and pressed her up against the wall.

She was telling him to stop. I swear she was telling him to stop. Yet, it seems that I cannot even convince the paper on which I am writing that she was telling him to stop.

I threw open the front door, its hinges breaking with the force behind my action. Mike's beady eyes stared at me, though unfocused as I am too fast. I pulled him off, dragged him down the hall by his shirt collar. Out the door, lawn, grass, earth, night. Flashes are all I can remember in the strange fury that overtook me. When I drained him his neck was sweaty and his blood was thick and putrid, so unappetizing that I fought the urge to gag as though it were human food. His eyes were still open when I heaved him into the dumpster.

Isabella watched from her spot above the sink.

#

July 4th 1963

Carlisle Cullen thinks I am cynical.

I told him to go die.

Too bad.

Isabella and her son and daughter were scorned by their neighborhood after my escapade. They sat alone under the stars in the corner of the park, their checkered blanket spread out underneath their sitting bodies. A gradual influx of hippies congregated in the opposite corner, practically fucking each other with their clothes on and their hair long. Isabella looked at them with contempt, her mind of another time and another place, a different era of flappers and prohibition.

Her children departed to get a better venue for the fireworks show. I sat beside Isabella Newton on her checkered blanket under the starry night.

'I knew it was you,' she said to me, her voice a distant tremor that sparked equally distant memories.

'You watched, of course you knew,' I replied. She paused and looked at me, her wrinkles now deeper set in her face, her hair grown out too long and needing a cut. She folded her hands in her lap.

'That is the first time you've really spoken to me.'

'If you said stop I would have stopped.'

'I didn't want you to stop.'

'I know.'

She is still stupid, Isabella Newton. I know this because she placed her hand in mine. I pulled it away. She shrugged it off. The first firework exploded over our heads, showering the night with bright ruby reds. The hippies squealed and threw their hands in the air, at which point Isabella shot them a glare and sighed. Her eyes scanned the area for her children, who sat by their friends with their heads craned up to the sky.

'You had children late,' I told her.

'I was waiting for you.'

'You knew I wouldn't come.'

'Yes, I knew.'

I always remember everything with perfect clarity. She didn't watch the fireworks. She watched her children, the grass, and the hippies. She looked over at me suddenly, her brown eyes piercing me like teeth to flesh. I wanted to drain her all over again.

'Give me your address,' she ordered me. I cracked a smile.

'No.'

'Just do it.'

'Fine.'

The finale was approaching. People began dancing about. Isabella's clothing was red, white and blue. That bothered me. I touched her hair and she shivered, turning to glare at me. The finale exploded above us. Children squealed.

'I wish you weren't so cold,' she said.

#

Unknown

_Edward Cullen,_

_Yes, I know your name. Of course I know your name. You destroyed me, took me down, brought me to hell and back, never told me you loved me, fucked me senseless, ruined me for marriage, scorned me, killed my husband, and plagued my every thought. Of course I know your name. You love me. My son's name is Edward. Mike hated that name. I hated Mike. You made me wait for you. There was no one left for me once I waited for you. You were it for me. You were always it for me. I am it for you, too. How can you do this to yourself? How can you live, exist, like this?_

_I don't expect you to respond to this letter. I don't expect anything from you. I never did, I guess. I just thought that maybe, just maybe, you would come around. I don't know what you are. Frozen in time, I suppose. Deadly, I know. You wanted to kill me. I remember that day, as I am sure you remember as well. When I scuffed me knee. I fell right in front of you. You sparkled in the daylight that day. Sparkled like a diamond. I thought you were a circus freak. I wanted you to take me away. I wanted you even then, to take me away. I sat there, waiting for you to move. You stared at me. You watched me. You wanted me, but you didn't move. You are always unchanging._

_You are my everything._

_Bella Newton_

#

(Illegible) 17th 1965

I threw Carlisle through a window. I am so angry. He told her everything. He made me try to drink blood from a fucking deer. He told Bella everything. What the fuck? A deer? Who the fuck drinks deer blood? He told her my name. He told her who I was. He told her what I am. She knows everything. I purged the deer blood from my system. It tastes like shit. She knows what I am. She contacted him. He hid it from me. I am never drinking deer blood again.

#

January 6 1973

I will never speak to her again.

#

January 7 1973

I am a mistake.

#

January 8 1973

I shouldn't exist.

#

January 9 1973

I give up.

#

2/6/97

After a certain point it was easier to forget. I am almost human in that way – in the way that I can suppress the bad memories if I really have to. It is a talent I have learned. I visited my father's grave again. Apparently the work standard has gone up, for there was no piss on the graves. I sat there for awhile, and when the man working the graveyard shift attempted to kick me out, I shot him a look that silenced him. I am unchanging in my physicality but my intellect and control is infinitely more refined. I still have not adopted the ways of my 'family', and I doubt I ever will, because I accept what I am. I don't accept it in a way that makes me happy about myself, but I do accept it because I have nothing else. I will never be anything else. And there is no use pretending.

I did check on her over the years, that was a given. The world has changed so much since I first saw her. I never did give her what she wanted. I took myself down, and I brought her down with me. But I never expected that she would actually… _die_.

Alice came before me not two days ago, telling me what she saw. Death via sleeping. Old age. 83 years. It would be her time. I slammed Alice into a wall and ran, taking with me every human in my path. There was a trail of death and blood, yet my fury was not sated, and will never be sated. I know all of their names. I was not discriminate in my killing as I once was. I no longer care what they look like, their social status, who they are, what they do. I no longer care. I just do. I just kill. I will never taste that sweet blood that I always yearned for, and with that I give myself a certain sense of credit, but not enough to discount my other deeds. But I will give her this diary, this journal of sorts. And I suppose I will go to her funeral and lurk in the back.

I suppose I will make sure no one pisses on her grave.

#

I finished the entirety of his journal in only half an hour. Almost a century of writing completed in such a short time. It was even cruel of him, to tell me that I was going to die before I went. I hated him for it. I loved him for it. I hated him for taping my letter into his diary. I hated him for never responding. I hated him for not bringing me with him. I loved him for not pulling me into his life. I fell asleep alone that night, as I have done almost every night, in my bed, staring out the open window. Nothing is ever there, except the last night. Because the last night, that very last night, I swear I saw a pair of red eyes peering right back at me.

#

**AN**

**hellOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO o_O**

**revrag beta'd it.**


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